Category: Art & Architecture

Aces Low

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I asked AI to design some modern Major Arcana cards, so we have The Rebuilt Tower, and The Wheel of Cheese.

Aces Low

The deck is quite a chunk to ruffle,
With their aspect ratio all wrong –
They’re just too long.
But practice helps the dealer shuffle,
When they deal-out hands of eighteen-strong.

Tarot plays a bit like bridge –
The bidding starts, the tricks are played the same,
With points the aim.
But choosing trumps is sacrilege –
They never get to change from game to game.

The trouble is the cards we lay –
For even when they bear French suits – and mind,
They’re rare to find –
But still they’re full of bullshit on display
Just number them, and leave the rest behind !

I wish the trumps were double-ended –
That’ll teach the fortune-telling quacks,
Don’t touch our packs !
And to balance out the genders,
Can’t the knights become the dames to beat the jacks ?

But no, we can’t enjoy our whist,
Without our cards be saturated through
With putrid woo.
It doesn’t take a psychic twist
For the twenty-one of trumps to beat a two.

Head up West and See the Lights

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You won’t believe how many times I had to ask AI to genenrate this image before it managed to spell it right…

Head up West and See the Lights

The neon lights of old Piccadilly-dilly
Used to be so bright and silly-silly,
But the screens have sprung-up willy-nilly –
Boringly displayed.

Now there’s nothing but advert-a-go-go,
Shouting products from ho-hum to so-so.
Art and style ?  I’m afraid that’s a no-no –
Over and over replayed.

Sell more junk food, flog more bling-bling,
Scream more news, from Bronx to Beijing-zhing,
Punching eyeballs, all for kerching-ching –
The goods must be obeyed.

The hungry billboards are always on-on
The Eiffel Tower needs a new Citroën-tron.
Buy buy buy till the stuff’s all gone-gone –
As long as the profits get made.

The Everlasting Subplot

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I asked AI for an image to match the words – and I’d say it didn’t do bad

The Everlasting Subplot

Ev’ry movie, ev’ry story,
Action, horror, western, crime –
Whatever else our heroes do,
They have to pair-off two-by-two.
Yet even ancients found it hoary,
Turning plots to pantomine –
That for a tale to really sell,
They have to fall in love as well.

It seems no genre is immune,
Nor leading man is spared the job –
It’s not enough to save the world,
They also have to get the girl.
And heroines can call the tune,
But only with their hearts a-throb –
For no adventure’s over till
The audience have had their thrill.

The Makings of an Artist

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Photo by Anna Tarazevich on Pexels.com

The Makings of an Artist

I could have been a painter,
With an easel and beret –
See, I’ve got the temp’rament,
And dreaminess, and enchanté.
But I haven’t got the talent
Or the patience of a saint –
Yet I could have been a painter
If I never had to paint.

I could have been a sculptor
Pulling wishes from the clay,
Or a jeweller, or a tailor,
Had I diff’rent DNA.
For I have an eye for beauty,
And a right-brained attitude,
But I’m lacking the dexterity
To conjure up my mood.

I could have been an author,
Building new worlds ev’ry day –
But my penmanship’s too cryptic
For my words to have their say.
So I’m not in any brotherhood
Who share philosophies,
But I know where I belong,
And it’s with people such as these.

I could have been a pianist,
To score life’s cabaret,
If my fingers would obey me,
When I tell them what to play.
I’ve always had a poet’s soul,
It’s written in my glands –
But I cannot hold my destiny
Within my clumsy hands.

Poundbury Pride & Ha’penny Hovels

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Peverell Avenue West by Colin Smith is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

Poundbury Pride & Ha’penny Hovels

It isn’t easy being a new-build
Here in Dorchester town,
With such a shining example besides them,
Flaunting its global renown.
An over-achieving older-sibling,
Rich in charm and style –
Well, no wonder the new kids look so miffed,
With not a facade with a smile.
I guess their neighbour’s one-in-a-million,
Bricks of a vanished strain –
And that’ll explain why we’re so unable
To build so well again…
So the latest estates must make-do with bland,
With a shrug from the half-arsed and bored,
While the decadent suburb that lies to the West
Is so desperately ignored.

A Space Ploddyssey

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Thank goodness AI has far more imagination and originality than HAL…

A Space Ploddyssey

As Kubrick prophesised
When the ape-men went exploring –
Space is vast, and time is slow,
And the future will be boring.
Red suited, black oblonged,
Very very small –
Man is dumb when met by wonder,
Stanley most of all.

The first three minutes of the movie are a black screen.  I’ve heard this described as the ‘overture’, a not-unknown feature of big blockbusters in the Sixties. Thinking about it, this moment does indeed pull together all of the tedium scattered through the film into one masterpiece of Cageian vacuum…

More seriously, there is the interview between the BBC and Frank and I’m-Sorry-Dave.  It takes seven minutes for each transmission to travel one way, so the crew give their answer, and have to wait fourteen minutes until they get their reply (plus the time to record the reply, unless it’s being streamed live).  Shouldn’t we next see them looking as if they had actually got up and done stuff in those fourteen minutes, rather than look as if we rejoin them five seconds later ? The fact that the film prioritises the suggestion that they are so dull they would happily remain sat in silence than have any moments of – human interaction, work, getting a drink, their hair getting a bit mussed-up, even unintentionally swapping places – says everything about why this film and I can never be friends.

The Thread of his Verbosity

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Self Portrait, Yawning by Joseph Ducreux;

The Thread of his Verbosity

Oh what a piece of work is man,
To stand upon the world’s-a-stage
And draw-out lines that lose their scan,
As ev’ry sentence takes an age.

Lend me your ears, I come to bury haste
Within the hollow crown –
For highbrow should be deathly-paced –
You fiery-footed steeds, slow down !

To be or not to be ?  Then not to be,
There’ll be no be tonight !
For ev’ry dry soliloquy
Shall take forever to recite.

What light from yonder window breaks ?
The Sun is up before I’m done.
I speak these word for all your sakes –
To drill them in, and damn your fun !

Is this a dagger I see before me,
Slashing pages from my text ?
But hold !, for still the crowds adore me
Droning-on one hour to next.

Out, out brief candle ?  Nay !
I still must ponder in my sorrow.
How long shall I have my say ?
Until tomorrow and tomorrow…

Puzzle-Passageways

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Relativity by Maurits Escher

Puzzle-Passageways

The trouble with a labyrinth,
Is that it feels so foreign –
Is that it has no logic
To its endless winding paths.
No hierarchy separating
Avenues from warrens,
As we trudge the many mazes
On our lost and aching calves.

Our only means of finding out
The route into the centre
Is by choosing random tracks
And by try-and-try-again –
With a dozen unsigned junctions
And a dozen doors to enter,
To a dozen cul-de-sacs,
And a single golden lane.

It makes sense in a dungeon,
With its safety-at-all-cost,
Or even on a garden,
Where the mapless lovers sally –
But why are city planners
Quite so keen to get us lost ?
Or to meet a Minotaur
Down a twisty, unlit alley…?

Serial Filler

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Serial Filler

Is anything more boring
Than another psychopath ?
He’s the laziest of monsters,
That we’re somehow meant to fear.
Just a clichéd bogeyman,
Who’s killing for a laugh –
Ho-hum, the same old slasher
Whom they think we’ll dread or cheer.

Is this another true-live nutter,
After fame at any price ?
And we’re determined to reward them,
Cos we’re really dumb.
Or is it just a fantasy
Of living through their vice ?
Getting all our jollies
Till our empathy is numb.

When the Curtain Never Falls

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Photo by Marcelo Jaboo on Pexels.com

When the Curtain Never Falls

The theatre is haunted, of course,
Because, well, you know actors…
An ingenue, I think, or else a restless dame –
Or was the spectral source
A longtime patron, or some benefactors
Still attending shows just like they always came ?
Expectation’s such a force
And narratives are such attractors –
No stage worth its boards can be without its ghostly claim.
The theatre is haunted, of course –
That must be the common factor,
Why both the roof and the backstage gossip leak-out just the same.